People often complain about Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on doors to evangelize–like it’s an imposition to answer the damn door. Teams of them fan out in my neighborhood at least once a month. Every Jehovah Witness I’ve known in my life was an exceptionally kind person so I don’t get bent out of shape when they knock.

Someone recently asked me if I consider them a religion or a cult.Well of course they’re a religion–& they take it very seriously whether anybody else likes it or not. The religion is austere & authoritarian & has many problems, not unlike those of Catholicism (including their handling of sexual abuse cases). But what you cannot take away from them is their steadfast refusal to participate in the military or swear nationalist loyalty.

Their persecution under Hitler & German fascism included expulsion from jobs & school, torture, execution, imprisonment, & concentration camps for refusing to perform military duty, join Nazi organizations, or do the “Seig Heil” to the Hitler regime. All of which they could have avoided if they just renounced their religion.

One could imagine the administration of their religion is as nefarious as the Vatican because there’s big money involved. But the average Jehovah’s Witness is sincerely committed to an evangelistic religion & I see no reason to impugn them even for beliefs I don’t share & dislike. If they enter the political arena & contest human rights, that’s another matter altogether.

Call me soft in the head but I think humanity gets along better if you leave people the hell alone & stop deriding them. Unless they’re politicians. It’s always open season on those dumb-asses. My own personal target is leftists who very much resemble cultists. But that’s another story.